Front Dooryards 
49 
“ On a grass-green swell 
That towards the south with sweet concessions fell. 
It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be 
As aboriginal as rock or tree. 
It nestled close to earth, and seemed to brood 
O’er homely thoughts in a half-conscious mood. 
If paint it e’er had known, it knew no more 
Than yellow lichens spattered thickly o’er 
That soft lead gray, less dark beneath the eaves. 
Which the slow brush of wind and weather leaves. 
The ample roof sloped backward to the ground 
And vassal lean-tos gathered thickly round. 
Patched on, as sire or son had felt the need. 
But the great chimney was the central thought. 
^ ^ 
It rose broad-shouldered, kindly, debonair. 
Its warm breath whitening in the autumn air.” 
Sarah Orne Jewett, in the plaint of A Mournful 
Villager , has drawn a beautiful and sympathetic 
picture of these front yards, and she deplores their 
passing. I mourn them as I do every fenced-in or 
hedged-in garden enclosure. The sanctity and re- 
serve of these front yards of our grandmothers was 
somewhat emblematic of woman’s life of that day : 
it was restricted, and narrowed to a small outlook 
and monotonous likeness to her neighbor’s ; but it 
was a life easily satisfied with small pleasures, and it 
was comely and sheltered and carefully kept, and 
pleasant to the home household ; and these were 
no mean things. 
The front yard was never a garden of pleasure ; 
children could not play in these precious little en- 
closed plots, and never could pick the flowers — 
E 
